Animal models of human diseases are important tools for understanding the pathological mechanisms underlying the diseases and for developing effective therapies. Prostate cancer will likely claim the lives of about 30,000 men in the United States this year alone, and more than 200,000 men will be newly diagnosed with the disease. Although mouse models of prostate cancer have been described in the art, they each have limitations. For example, transgenic mice that express an SV40 tumor antigen under the control of a rat probasin promoter exhibited a rapid disease progression, typically displaying prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (“PIN”) by 6-12 weeks of age, and invasive carcinoma by 18-22 weeks of age. Such results differ from the characteristically slow development of carcinomas in humans. Further, prominent expression of the transgene has been detected in the ventral lobes in some of the mouse models, an area not analogous to the peripheral zone where human prostate carcinoma typically arises. In addition, the prevalence of neuroendocrine carcinomas in some of the mouse models also limits the relevance of those models to the small subpopulation of patients with neuroendocrine disease.
Therefore, there is a need for improved animal models of prostate cancer that faithfully recapitulate the pathological features of human prostate cancer.